Legacy in Bengali Literature: Chandidas and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu
The popularity of Badu Chandidas lies as the writer of the legendary drama in verse, Shreekrishna Kirtana. Taking the Puranic tale of Krishnaleela with a notable influence of Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda and based on the simple village gossips about Radha-Krishna prevalent among the masses, the story revolves around three main characters- Krishna, Radha and Badai (Dyuti).
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Ramayana Parampara in Tripura
This is the third part in the series of articles on the Ramayana tradition in North-East India. The immensely rich cultural history and heritage of Tripura certainly brings forth the point that both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata had always been an integral and inseparable part of this heritage.
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अद्वैत वेदांत द्वारा विश्व की समस्याओ का परिहार
चूंकि दर्शनशास्त्र विषय की प्रकृति बहुआयामी होती है अतः इस बात को कहने में कोई आपत्ति नहीं होनी चाहिए कि दर्शनशास्त्र के अन्तर्गत जो अवधारणाएं हमें परिलक्षित होती है, उनकी भी प्रकृति बहुआयामी ही होगी। यह सभ्यता बोध मनुष्य का मनुष्य से, मनुष्य का प्रकृति से मनुष्य का ईश्वर से द्वैतभाव नहीं रखता है। हमारी सभ्यता अद्वैतबोध के आधार पर निर्मित है।
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The History of Bharatvarsha
The history of India that we read and memorize for our examinations is really a nightmarish account of India. But if Bharatavarsha is viewed with these passing frames of dreamlike scenes, smeared in red, overlaid on it, the real Bharatavarsha cannot be glimpsed. Amongst the civilizations of the world Bharatavarsha stands as an ideal of the endeavour to unify the diverse.
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Limits of Language
Speech is known by the wise knowers of the Vedas to be made up of four parts. Three of these – Para, the Shabda-Brahman; Pasyanti, unformed language; and Madhyama, mental language – lie unmanifested in the depths of one’s being. It is only the fourth that people speak. - Rig Veda, 1.164.45
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Philosophy of Language in the Vaiyakarana Tradition
The Indian conception of language differs in three ways from the Western: Language is speech, not writing (script); Language is a cognitive system (not, primarily, a means of communication); and Language is a constructivist system (not a representational one).
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Language : The Vibration of Consciousness
Bhartṛhari propounds a cosmological thesis. The whole universe (or we should say the linguistic universe), consisting of two different types of things, the vācyas, bits and pieces of the constructed world to which language refers, and the linguistic expressions, the vācaka (signifier), has evolved out of one principle called the Word-Essence, śabda-tattva, the Eternal Verbum, śabda-brahman, the ever-exceeding consciousness of the sentient. We may discount this point as a theological or metaphysical bias, but there may be an important truth implicit in it here. Our perceived world is also an interpreted world. And this interpretation is invariably in terms of some language or other. Interpretation is ‘languageing’. Bhartṛhari believes that both language and the ‘world’ it purports to refer to (and this ‘world’ by his own explicit admission may or may not coincide with the external, actual world) form an indivisible, unitary whole.
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The Language of the Indian Mystics
There are several ways by which our mystic-authors may (and actually do) present the so-called ineffable. I can identify at least three broad ways by which they accomplish it. This does not mean, however, that the mystics have been lying or deceiving themselves when they have been claiming IME. I take the IME Ineffability of Mystical Experience doctrine to be a warning signal to the readers (or hearers) to alert them against a facile understanding (a misunderstanding) of what the mystics say, such an understanding being based upon a too literal interpretation of their words. The words of the mystics are generated by a flash of inspiration and a similar sympathetic feeling may be needed in order to fully grasp their message.
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The Hard Problem of Consciousness and Multi-valued Logic
In this fourth part of the ongoing series on Multivalued logic, Aniruddha Singhal discusses many disciplines of science and mathematics and tells us that the same problem which is encountered by bivalued logic in describing the world is encountered by many disciplines. He also discusses the hard problem of consciousness which debates over which came first, matter or consciousness. Singhal proposes that looking at the problem from multivalued logic may solve the problem.
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How Paradoxes Result from a Bi-valued System of Logic
In this third installment of the series on differences between bi-valued logic and multi-valued logic, Aniruddha Singhal in this piece describes how all the paradoxes of science today, like the paradox of Shroedinger's cat, can be resolved if they are seen in the framework of multi-valued system of logic, rather than the bi-valued system of logic. The author forcefully argues that the paradoxes do not represent a fault in reality, but a fault in human understanding. That is what we have to correct.
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